


Run

by RowboatCop



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: (Which is also what happened in canon?), AU, AoS is dark without Skye, AoS without Skye, Coulson and Skye having a really intense quickly formed relationship, Coulson runs away, Coulson still can't escape the events of season 1, Dry Humping, F/M, Flirting, Sad Coulson, Sexual Content, Skoulson bond over being betrayed, Skye always wants to help people, Skye and Coulson's sexy socialist book club, Some roadtrip tropes, Sort of desperate embarrassing Phil Coulson, Unrealistically great sex, skoulsonfest2k14, socialism as a turn on
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-01
Updated: 2014-11-15
Packaged: 2018-02-15 16:21:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 18,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2235546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RowboatCop/pseuds/RowboatCop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU in which the team never crossed paths with Skye, and Coulson meets her on a bus headed from LA to Austin as he runs away from SHIELD, around episode 12. </p><p>Without Skye around, the events of the first half of season 1 take a much harsher toll on Coulson. After feeling responsible for the deaths of Mike Peterson and then Fitz, Coulson's kidnapping at the hands of Raina goes on for much longer and he sees much more -- more about aliens and his role in Project TAHITI. Finding out about May's communications with Fury is the last straw that sends him packing, sure that SHIELD is not an organization to be trusted.</p><p>Skye has been having her own adventures in LA, as without connections to Coulson, her research into Project Centipede has been more extensive and more critical of the ties between the Clairvoyant and SHIELD. After attracting too much attention from the bad guys, she decides to head to Austin where she can regroup with one of her few IRL friends and contacts. Of course, nothing works out according to her plans.</p><p>Together, Skye and Coulson unravel the mysteries around them, but they can't outrun the events of season 1.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> Skoulsonfest2k14 Day 6 Prompt: "AU" 
> 
> Seriously, without Skye around in the first half of the season, a lot of people die, and I can’t even deal with what all that means. So, for example, even though I’m taking it that Mike Peterson didn’t make it past episode one (because Skye’s intel allowed the team to get there barely in time, and *fuck* I hate that), I’m assuming that Garrett and Ward still found a way to kidnap Coulson. The only thing not following from a direct reading of “what would have happened without Skye” is Coulson discovering May’s ‘betrayal’ sooner — that just makes for a better ‘Coulson on the run’ story.

You can measure your relative location in a trip across Arizona by the presence of saguaros on the side of the highway. East of Phoenix, the hulking shapes get smaller, fewer and further between. And past Tucson, they’re gone altogether. It’s ironic that they’re so heavily associated with southwestern imagery — or, not _them_ but some Platonic ideal with three perfectly spaced arms making a trident — when they make up such a small part of the scenery on this trip.

They’re now on the part of the drive filled only with flat stretches of desert, broken up by distant mountains and less-distant plateaus. The clouds are more scenery than the desert, big fluffy shapes spaced across a sky so enormous that it threatens to swallow the landscape.

It means that they’re getting closer to the New Mexico border. Coulson is not looking forward to being in New Mexico again, even though he has no plans to step off the Greyhound bus for more than a bathroom. There’s just something about being places where he was _before_ that unsettles him.

He doesn’t trust who he was _before_. Doesn’t trust what he remembers from _before_.

Coulson presses his foot to the bag stashed under his seat, reassuring himself of its presence. He hates the bag — or rather, he hates carrying a bag that contains everything he’s managed to piece together about himself — but it’s still comforting to know its there. Inside is every file he’s gotten his hands on — through both legal _and_ illegal means. Every test Simmons ran during the last three physicals he scheduled. Every transmission he had been able to intercept from May’s little setup with Fury. Every page he’d filled with the memories dredged up by eight excruciating days in Raina’s machine — images of a medicine administered in an underground bunker, of a machine that had rewritten his memories, of a large blue alien creature, of himself alive and whole and administering the drug to others, of a set of symbols he doesn’t understand.

The bag also contains a great deal of cash, which he hopes will keep him invisible for long enough to just disappear — enough to stay nomadic until it is safe to settle somewhere.

He is _done_ with SHIELD.

He is done with lies and secrets and false friends and control masked as concern.

Coulson is pulled out of his thoughts at the realization that the woman across the aisle is staring at him.

He locks eyes with her, immediately assessing her threat level, and decides she seems mostly harmless. Barely 20, if that. The outfit — skintight jeans, low cut shirt, boots that have clearly never seen shoe polish, hair pulled back in a messy ponytail — says that she’s probably never even heard of SHIELD, let alone that she could be operating as a spy.

She’s spent a great deal of this trip so far hunched over her cell phone, which she now slides into her pocket as she rises from her seat and takes the one next to him.

“Hi.” She smiles at him, too sweet and too friendly and too much playing up her youth. He swears that if she had a piece of gum, she would be popping it in his face right now, and it’s almost incongruous with the serious way she was holding his eye the moment before.

“Hi.” He’s wary, but his discomfort only seems to make her feel more at home.

“I’m Skye,” she tells him. And even though she waits expectantly for his name, he doesn’t give it. Just frowns at her. “So, you’re not exactly the average passenger on this kind of bus,” she observes. She says it like its a conversation starter, like it’s small talk, but he can tell that she’s getting at something. He can tell she knows something.

“I suppose not,” he answers, not allowing for any conversation-starting.

“You can trust me on that. I take this route all the time.”

He nods, but doesn’t further engage.

“Do you, like, work for the government or something?”

Coulson narrows his eyes at her and doesn’t answer.

“Will you at least tell me your name? Please?”

The girl flutters her eyelashes at him, and he rolls his eyes.

“Phil.”

Her too-sweet act ends right then, he watches it fall away, and her smile turns into something that could be dangerous.

“Not even using a pseudonym, Phil?! What’s with that?”

He freezes for half a second before reaching down to grab his bag. But then, it’s not like he can just run. The bus is moving, and he needs the bag stored below. He glances around the surrounding seats, sees that they are all empty — there are not a lot of people heading towards Texas today.

Skye’s hand lands on his arm, though, almost comforting.

“Who are you?”

“A friend,” she tells him, dropping the empty-headed act, sounding serious and purposeful. Their eyes lock, and he sees sincerity in them — sincerity and maturity. She seems at least ten years older, suddenly, like she knows more about the world than he could possibly understand.

And it's stupid — he _knows_ it's stupid — but he starts to trust her. Right then, he starts to trust her.

“Skye, like I said.” She extends a hand towards him, and he takes it, shaking it once. “I’m a member of —”

“The Rising Tide.” It falls together suddenly. They had been tracking this girl, thought they would need her back when the hooded hero story broke, but Mike Peterson had made himself plenty findable without her. Coulson had listened to her podcasts, though, had taken an interest in her her general philosophies and her criticisms of SHIELD, and it would make sense that she had been tracking SHIELD right back.

“My reputation precedes me?” She looks somewhere between flattered and nervous.

“I know you made some sort of contact with the hooded hero last year. My team was trying to save him,” he tells her.

“I heard you blew him up,” she counters, eyes narrowed on his face.

“He blew up.” Coulson closes his eyes, remembers dropping off the little boy at his aunt’s house. “His powers were caused by an unstable serum that was also making him violent. We didn’t figure it out until too late.”

“Why were you trying to save him, if he was violent?”

“It wasn’t his fault,” Coulson shrugs. “I know what you think of SHIELD, but it’s not so unreasonable. When someone is a victim of experimentation, why should he be punished?”

“You’re _running away_ from SHIELD. You’re on their fugitive list. And you’re going to tell me that they’re basically reasonable?”

He shrugs. That’s a fair criticism, but thirty years of defending SHIELD is a hard habit to break.

“They’re keeping things from me. Personal things.”

They sit quietly next to each other for a few minutes. Dread is growing in the pit of Coulson’s stomach, though. He should have had a few days before they started looking for him, and it means that everything is going to be much harder.

“I can help you,” she says, pulling him out of it. He must look skeptical because she rolls her eyes. “I _can_. I can help you set up a new identity. I can help you keep track of what they know and where they are. I am _crazy good_ at this stuff, Phil.”

He almost smiles at that, at the way she has of making herself seem so wholly vulnerable, so earnest. Coulson knows better than to totally buy it, though, knows that everyone has secrets they don’t want to share.

But it makes a sick kind of sense — a mutual enemy of SHIELD, and one who isn’t an _entirely_ unknown quantity. He’s listened to her, read her work, before. He knows she’s sincere and that her beliefs are deeply felt and well-reasoned. Honestly, even back last year, he was sympathetic to a lot of what she had to say. And now...

“And what do you want in return?”

“Besides to help you?” She tilts her head to the side, examining him. “Your story. Stuff you know about SHIELD.”

“I’m not going to help you bring down SHIELD,” he tells her. “A lot of what they do may seem bad from the outside, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important.”

“So, what, they’re allowed to keep all the secrets in the world, but when they keep some from you that’s where you draw the line?”

She says the words derisively, calling him on his hypocrisy, and he closes his eyes. He doesn’t know anymore where the line should be drawn, doesn’t know where loyalty is supposed to be given, and he wants more than anything to forget that SHIELD even exists.

“Hey.” Skye places a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry.” It strikes him that it’s not some platitude — she _really_ means it, really feels bad for pushing him. “I get that you’re going through something, and it’s okay. Honestly, Phil. I can help you. Trust me.”

And, God help him, he does. 


	2. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hotel room negotiations

“I could have afforded two rooms,” he tells her as they walk inside their room for the night. After almost twenty four hours on a bus, he’d have liked to have his own space to stretch out in.

“No, you really couldn’t have,” she corrects him. “You have no money beyond what’s in that bag, and you can’t afford to waste it. Besides, this way if something happens we’re already together.”

They’re staying in Nowhere, West Texas in what he hopes is meant to be a novelty motel — animal skins cover far too many surfaces, and a large cow skull hangs off the wall above the king bed. A wooden crucifix decorated with vaguely Native American patterns hangs over the queen.

At least there are two beds.

Coulson drags his suitcase up onto the old wooden dresser and begins to pull out what he needs. He was surprised that Skye’s bag is much smaller — he doesn’t see how it can hold more than two or three changes of clothes.

“Do you want the skull or the crucifix?” He gestures between the two beds as he pulls out his shaving kit, trying to decide whether having the bigger bed makes up for sleeping under a dead cow.

Skye laughs and looks between them thoughtfully.

“It’s not a crucifix,” she corrects him. “There’s no Jesus on that cross.”

He concedes with a nod.

“I prefer not to sleep under crosses, but I’m sure you’d rather have the bigger bed.”

“I prefer not to sleep under skulls,” he tells her, head tilted to the side as he tries to figure out what she means to say with her comment.

“I’m not a vampire or something. It’s just...there were crucifixes above our beds at the orphanage. Like, bad ones, with Jesus bleeding and screaming.” She shudders at the memory, and he tucks away that piece of knowledge as he slips off his socks and shoes.

“You can take the other bed,” he tells her. “It’s fine.”

Skye nods, but stands and watches him too closely.

“It’s your turn, now,” she tells him. “I let slip something personal. Now you’re supposed to do the same.”

“But you already know everything about me. I know nothing about you — not even your real name.”

“It’s Skye,” she tells him. “Just Skye. I changed it when I was sixteen.”

“Legally?”

“What does _legally_ really mean?” She grins at him. “It’s the only name you’ll find me under.”

“And what was your name before you changed it?”

“The name the nuns gave me...that was never really _my_ name.”

“But what was it?”

“I don’t know you well enough to get into it.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“Worse.” She pauses, widens her eyes. “Embarrassing.”

Skye smiles, self-deprecating and silly, and Coulson swallows.

“I joined SHIELD right out of high school. I was with them for thirty years. Last year, I died.”

“Well, you look pretty great for a fifty year old dead guy,” she offers, shooting him a flirty grin. He knows she’s trying to lighten the mood, but he feels nothing but heavy. Her smile falls as she watches him, and he wonders what exactly she’s seeing. “Like, _died_ died?”

“Three days.”

“No. That’s not possible.” She collapses backwards onto the other bed, as though she’s been knocked over.

“Now you see why I wanted more information.”

“How…”

“I don’t know. I think it was...alien.”

“Like, unknown alien?”

He just shakes his head.

She nods twice, and even though she doesn’t stop looking at him, she does let it drop.

“Do you want the bathroom first?” He offers.

“No, I um…I’ve missed a few showers this week, so I’m thinking I’ll do that when you’re done.”

Coulson nods, and although he wants to ask, her eyes fall to the floor so he doesn’t. She isn’t ashamed or embarrassed, he thinks, she just doesn’t want to talk about it. And right now, he understands that. 


	3. 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’s hiding things. He knows she’s hiding things, wants to have some respect for her desire to hide things, but he’s also annoyed because they both know she has access to everything about him. Everything that’s not in his bag, anyways.

“Where’s home for you?”

He’s pushing around a side of under-ripe cantaloupe while she devours a stack of pancakes, and he wonders when the last time she ate was. It’s almost funny, but he forgets for a moment that she’s the one who picked him up. She’s the one who offered to help _him_.

“Never had one,” she answers with a shrug. As though that’s an answer.

“Were you in LA for a while?” He figures he can try this without using ‘home.’

“Yeah. About two years. I was...looking for something. I didn’t find it.”

She’s hiding things. He knows she’s hiding things, wants to have some respect for her desire to hide things, but he’s also annoyed because they both know she has access to everything about him. Everything that’s not in his bag, anyways.

“What made you decide to leave?”

“Someone crashed into my van.” She looks up into his eyes, seems to be daring him to make any sort of statement, but he doesn’t. He just waits. “Austin is a lot cheaper and I have some friends there. So I figured…”

He nods, waits for her to continue.

She doesn’t; instead changes the subject.

“Are you really headed to Portland?”

He narrows his eyes at her, and she smiles innocently.

“That’s in my file?”

“Yup."

He nods. It’s not shocking.

“I don’t know where I’m going. I know they’ll expect me in Portland.”

“What...what’s in Portland? Is that where you’re from?”

“No,” he answers.

“Friends?”

“A...woman.”

“Girlfriend?”

“She doesn’t know I’m alive.”

“So...ex-girlfriend, then.” Skye’s eyes are wide. It’s clear she’s trying to navigate an awkward situation as non-awkwardly as possible, and he appreciates that it’s difficult.

“I suppose so.”

“Maybe...maybe we could contact her?”

“Given that she doesn’t know I’m alive, I don’t think I can just call her up and see if she’s up for a vacation.”

“I could. I could do that for you, if you want. We could get her to Texas.” She looks excited at having located something specific she can do for him, and it almost makes him smile. There’s a part of him that wants to see Audrey, but there’s a bigger part of him that doesn’t want contact with the parts of his life that came _before_.

“I’m not sure.”

“You don’t want to see her?”

“I’m…”

Before he recovered his memories, he had thought maybe he owed it to Audrey to seek her out. He had thought he still loved her. But the truth is that now — now that he knows what was going on while he was dating her, now that he knows SHIELD has messed with his memories going back into that time — he’s not sure it’s the best thing for his own well being. He’s not sure if what he remembers about her is even _real_.

“You’re not sure.” Skye nods, sits back in her booth, as though he’s not being completely confusing. He _does_ really appreciate how good she seems to be at taking things as they come. “If you want me to, I can contact her. If not, that’s okay, too.”

“Why would you do that for me?”

“Because you need help?” She looks at him like he’s stupid, like it’s normal for someone to bend over backwards to help another person. (That used to be in him — he’s sure it did. It’s not death that killed it, though, it’s SHIELD.) “Helping people is sort of what I do.”

“I’ve had a run in with someone from the Rising Tide. He sold information on a man to some very bad people.”

Skye frowns.

“Then he wasn’t really representing Rising Tide. That’s not what we’re about.” He’s skeptical, and Skye’s face gets fiercer. “It’s really not. I would never sell information.”

“I get that,” he tells her. She wouldn’t be traveling so light, after living out of a van, if she would ever consider an opportunity to make a million dollars.

“But the man on the run from a top secret government organization is still going to be judgemental about some activists.”

“Activists who have helped bad guys get weapons, Skye. Who helped some bad people kill a young man in China last year.”

She narrows her eyes at him, purses her lips, and nods once.

“There are always bad apples. But the organization isn’t rotten.”

“SHIELD might be,” Coulson shares. Yeah, he’s confused.

Silence falls between them as they eye each other over their half-eaten breakfasts. She looks better today — cleaner, more put together, with her hair in loose waves around her face. Yesterday, he hadn’t realized how attractive she is, and right now he’d really prefer not to have noticed.

“So why did you join SHIELD?”

Coulson shakes his head

“I wanted to help people. That’s what I do. Or...that’s what I thought I did.”

“Did you? Help people?”

“I saved a lot of people’s lives.” He feels sure about that. “But I lost some people, too. And I helped keep secrets when I probably shouldn’t have.”

Skye nods, and he feels like he’s under a microscope as she stares at him.

“You feel guilty about people who died.”

“Yes,” he answers. “People like the hooded hero, who we couldn’t save in time. Or...one of my team.”

It’s possible he’s going to cry because Fitz was just a kid, and he went in trusting that SHIELD would pull him out.

Skye’s hand lands on his, and she rubs comfortingly.

“I’m sure you did everything you could to save him.” She says it like she’s so sure, like she can’t imagine he wouldn’t do his best, and it’s almost shocking.

“Why would you assume that?”

“I can just tell.” She shrugs, tilts her head as she considers him. “I can just tell that you try to be a good person.”

“I wasn’t a good person then. He died because SHIELD was hiding information, and I defended it. For the good of the mission.”

“Was it a good mission?”

He shakes his head.

“Does it matter? Should someone’s life ever be sacrificed for a mission without their consent?”

“No,” she answers easily, and Coulson half-smiles.

“I’m so tired of moral grey areas,” he admits. “I’m tired of having to weigh the value of one life against many. I’m tired of wondering when secrets are okay. I’m just…”

“Tired.”

Her hand is still on top of his, and she strokes her fingers from his wrist to his knuckles before sliding her hand inside of his. He looks down at their intertwined hands and back up at her questioningly.

“You look like you need some support.”

His smile at that is sad, his puff of almost-laughter more like almost-crying, because he can count on one hand the number of times someone has touched him since he died. (Most of the touching he has had since he died was actually false memories implanted in his brain.)

“Yeah.”

  
  



	4. 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That night, he dreams he’s in Tahiti.
> 
> It happens every few weeks, and for some reason its the most unsettling of his nightmares because he knows its wrong. Because even though he knows its wrong, he’s still there. Because if he can still be in Tahiti, even though he’s never been to Tahiti, then what does that mean about any of his memories? Any of his personality? Any of his self?

It’s another small nowhere motel on the train line — smaller, dirtier, sadder. The whole town is smaller, dirtier, sadder than the last one, which probably has to do with the fact that it was built as a railroad town, and it’s 2014. Super Nowhere, West Texas might actually have a larger population of goats than people, but it has an Amtrak stop.

Still, at least there are no skulls in the hotel room.

“I don’t see why you hated the cow skull so much.”

“I don’t see why you would decorate with animal skulls.”

“I don’t see why you would decorate with statues of a _dying_ guy.”

“At least those are just statues.”

Skye smiles at him, and he almost returns it.

He sort of likes her.

Coulson watches as she tosses her bag of clothes on the bed and pulls out her beat up laptop. It takes her only thirty seconds to close it, huffing dramatically about the crappy WiFi.

“It’ll be better when we get to Austin,” she promises him. “This whole part of Texas is sort of…”

“Empty?”

“Yeah.”

They’re staying out here until tomorrow, then taking the train to Austin. Skye is insistent on changing up modes of transportation and operating at odd hours, and that’s smart tactically, but he’s a little bewildered about why she’s so good at this. Everything about her seems calculated to avoid discovery, including the way she’s constantly packed and ready to bolt — he thinks that’s her, anyways, and not just because of him.

It had taken her two hours of typing furiously — two hours of her obviously working hard and cracking jokes about how she wished he could understand how great she really is — to book their tickets under fake names and to secure temporary IDs under those names. She's assured him that her contact in Austin will be able to help with getting permanent ones, which again raises questions about why it feels like Skye is running just as much as he is. 

“Did you spend a lot of time in Austin?”

“Yeah,” she answers. “I lived there for a few years after I left St. Agnes.”

He can hear in her voice that she didn’t leave so much as run away, assumes it was probably relatively young. Probably a high school dropout, then. And he couldn’t care less about education — he respects competence and intelligence and morality, not diplomas — but he also knows that it must have only made things harder for her.

“Is it common to have been at an orphanage for so long, instead of homes?”

He has a momentary flash of guilt for prying, but Skye doesn’t actually seem to mind sharing things with him. There are some secrets about what she’s been up to in her recent past, but the time before the past year has seemed like relatively fair game.

Of course, he’s also certain that the things she has shared nonchalantly, little throw-away comments about nuns and families, actually bother her a lot more than she tries to let on.

“No,” she answers. “I had sort of a reputation. I never lasted in foster care for longer than a few months, so I’d be bounced back and forth between St. Agnes at least two or three times a year.”

He blinks, squints at her, trying to understand how that could be. When she said she’d never had a home, he had assumed that she was exaggerating.

“You’re trying to figure out what’s wrong with me, right? Why people would send me back?”

She’s joking, everything about her demeanor says it’s light and satirical and she doesn’t care, but he can tell this bothers her. This matters.

“No,” he answers honestly. “I’m wondering how you turned out…”

“How I turned out what?”

He clears his throat, trying to find the right word.

“Good.”

“You think I’m good? Even though I’m affiliated with a terrorist organization?”

Coulson shrugs.

“There are some bad people in your organization,” he tells her, “but I know you believe in something bigger than yourself.”

“Freedom of information? Justice for the underclasses? Redistribution of wealth?” Skye pauses, narrows her eyes at him. “And you’re going to stand there in your expensive suit and your shined shoes and tell me that you think those things make me good?”

“Yes,” he answers, shrugs. “You have ideals. You help people. A lot of people wouldn’t blame you if you turned out to be a very selfish person.”

“Fuck that,” she scoffs. “Circumstances matter, of course they do, but it’s not like you get a free pass.”

He’s sort of awed by her, by everything about her, and his lips curve into a smile that almost hurts his face.

It makes her completely light up.

“Hey! You can smile!”

A startled sort-of chuckle forces its way up from his belly, and Skye looks like a fascinating mixture of proud of herself and proud of him.

Their eyes catch, and Coulson has a hard time looking away. He’s too aware of the smile on his face, almost alien after the pain of the past few months. He’s too aware of the fact that he’s sharing a room with a beautiful young woman who probably wouldn’t appreciate him thinking about her that way.

His smile slips away, but their eyes hold, and it feels like the air goes out of the room. He thinks for a moment that Skye is going to say something — something big. Something important. Instead, though, she looks away with an awkward smile.

“I’m going to brush my teeth.”

She grabs her ziplock bag of toiletries out of her duffel and heads into the tiny bathroom as though there wasn’t just a moment of awkwardness between them, so he gets ready for bed just the same.

Coulson slips of his jacket and tie — Skye basically informed him earlier that he needs to change up his look, and he knows she’s right, but these outfits mean something to him. It feels like a link to who he is when everything else that he is has somehow slipped away. But then, maybe he needs to learn how to be himself without the suits.

He’s just pulled his undershirt over his head when she walks out of the bathroom, and at her wide eyed stare, he grasps his shirt to his chest. It’s almost amusing — this gender role exchange, this state of the man desperately trying to cover his chest. Almost, but not really.

Skye clearly sees everything. Her eyes go wide, mouth dropped open in something like horror.

“You _died_ .” He doesn’t blame her for needing the livid pink scar to drive home the fact that he was very serious about that. “Holy _fuck_ Phil, what even happened to you?”

He swallows.

“Loki wielding an alien staff.”

“You were killed in New York?”

“Sort of,” he agrees. “Just before.”

Skye is staring at him, eyes almost willing him to lower the shirt, and then she seems to catch herself. She turns around, facing away, and he can see her take a deep breath.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to… Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” He digs out the t-shirt he slept in the previous night and pulls it over his head. “You can turn around.”

“It’s not okay, though. I didn’t mean to make you feel… It’s just, it was…”

“It’s okay.” It really is. He doesn’t want her to feel apologetic about this.

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t —”

“I mean, I’m sorry that...that happened,” she clarifies. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

He nods, once, not sure he can speak.

“You want to take the bathroom? I’m...good.”

She forces a smile, so he does, too, but he can tell it looks more like a grimace.

 

—

 

That night, he dreams he’s in Tahiti.

It happens every few weeks, and for some reason its the most unsettling of his nightmares because he knows its wrong. Because even though he knows its wrong, he’s still there. Because if he can still be in Tahiti, even though he’s never _been_ to Tahiti, then what does that mean about any of his memories? Any of his personality? Any of his _self_?

“Phil.”

His massage therapist runs her fingers under his neck, except no one is touching his neck. No one is bringing him a daiquiri. They are only ordering more surgery.

“ _Phil_.”

He stirs awake at the sound of his voice, sweat clinging to his forehead, and sees Skye standing next to the bed. Her hands are outstretched, a posture of vulnerability and reassurance, but she isn’t touching him.

“You awake?”

“Yeah,” he answers, trying to shake off the deep sense of unease. He shouldn’t be more bothered by these dreams than the scarier ones — the ones with the alien and the pain and the terror.

Slowly, Skye reaches out and touches his arm, makes gentle, reassuring, undemanding contact.

“Sorry. Did I wake you?”

“It’s okay,” she answers, taking a seat on the edge of his bed. She’s moving slowly, as though she expects he might not just object to her presence, but _violently_ object. He places a hand over hers, pinning her fingers to his forearm and rubbing across the back of her hand — tries to reassure her that her touch is not unwanted.

She slides closer, envelopes him in a hug, and he takes in a deep, shuddering breath. Her touch is very, very wanted.

They’re quiet for a few moments, listening to each other breathe.

“Do you get them often?”

“Yes,” he answers, honestly.

“I’m sorry.” Her voice is quiet, and she rubs a hand across his back as she holds him to her. “Lie down.”

Coulson tilts his head to look at her, more than a little confused, but follows through as she directs him down to the bed. Skye presses herself against his back as she lies down, too, one hand draped across his chest and resting almost over his scar.

“Okay?”

She’s so _careful_ , so gentle, and it undoes him because he’s not supposed to know this woman that well, and yet here’s the most comfortable he’s felt with another human being in the better part of a year.

“You don’t have to do this,” he tells her, tries to keep any shaking out of his voice.

Her whole body stiffens, like she might pull away.

“Do you want me to go back over there?” He can feel her chin gesture toward the other bed.

“No.” Which is more honest that he had planned on being.

“Good.”

He falls asleep with Skye pressed against his back, with her hand resting on his chest, and for the first time in a long time, there are no dreams, no restlessness.

 


	5. 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She scoots in closer, and he has the urge to put his arm around her on their little bench in their little private sleeping car — to extend the physical contact she began last night. It's hard not to wonder what it would be like to have met her without baggage between them — this beautiful, vibrant young woman who he can't help but admire. And like. Very much.

In the morning, he wakes up tangled around Skye. She’s almost sprawled across him — her breasts pressed to his chest, his arms curved around her back, her leg laced through his. His erection is pressed intimately into the hollow between her pelvic bones, beneath the slight softness of her belly. It feels too good — _way_ too good — and even though he knows he should get himself away from her, he stays still, he just enjoys the sensation of being with another person. It’s not long before Skye starts to stir awake, and Coulson tenses, waits for her to pull back with disgust.

She doesn’t. Instead, she drags her cheek across his chest and inhales, as though breathing him in, and sighs out an exhale.

Slowly, so slowly that he’s _almost_ sure it has to be on purpose, she arches her back such that her pelvis presses into his. He can’t even stifle a groan at the pressure against his cock, at the feeling of her body moving over his.

Skye sits up unhurried, and smirks at him. He can’t even read the whole content of her smirk — it’s a little pleased and a little knowing and a little like he’s passed some sort of test. Whatever it means, he wouldn’t mind terribly if she looked at him like that a lot.

And then she stands up and stretches, grabs the ziplock bag with her toothbrush, and walks towards the bathroom.

“I’m going to brush my teeth,” she informs him unnecessarily, “and then you can have the first shower.”

He blushes at the implication, but doesn’t bother to correct her. And then things are just...normal. Or, as normal as things can be when one is on the run with a total stranger who feels...not strange.

  
  


—

  
  


Later, as he sits on the train watching the terrain grow from desert to mountains and then melt back to flat desert, he can’t quite get the memory of her body against his out of his head

“It’s kind of pretty, right?”

He’s surprised by her sudden presence beside him — she’s been trying to find snacks, and judging by the plastic bag at her side, he guesses she’s succeeded — and pulls his gaze off of the landscape zipping by.

“Yes.”

“It’s long, but I actually don’t mind this trip so much.”

He smiles at her, and the sight of his smile makes her light up. Its a feedback loop, and his grin stretches across his face as her smile grows.

She scoots in closer, and he has the urge to put his arm around her on their little bench in their little private sleeping car — to extend the physical contact she began last night. It's hard not to wonder what it would be like to have met her without baggage between them — this beautiful, vibrant young woman who he can't help but admire. And like. Very much.

That's not even a question, though, since they never would have met without this baggage between them. She never would have come to talk to him if she hadn't been stalking SHIELD.

So he won’t touch her, of course. He’ll keep a safe distance between them, won’t do anything to make her feel uncomfortable.

Instead, he turns towards her and watches as she cracks open a water and takes a long gulp.

“So you do this a lot? Visit your friend in Austin?”

“I’ve done it maybe eight times?” she shrugs. “I don’t have a lot of contacts that I know in the real world, so he’s important, you know. Plus, he’s the one that got me started in real hacktivism. Before that, I was basically just messing around.”

“How did you meet?”

“Online. I was working on something, and we met in forums. He offered to help, and we just hit it off. He taught me a lot.”

Coulson nods.

“I was… When we met, I was sort of...messed up. He helped me out a lot, and I think I was able to help him, too.”

“Messed up how?”

“There was a little bit of jail. Mostly for shoplifting.”

She says it like it’s a joke.

“Shoplifting what?”

“Food mostly. Some clothes. Sleeping bag. Stuff I needed.”

He nods, tries not to respond in any other way, but can’t stop his frown. Not that she stole, but that she _had to steal_.

“It’s okay,” she tells him, smiling at him like she finds him amusing. “I know it makes you uncomfortable, but I haven’t had a terrible life. You don’t have to look all...sad.”

“I don’t like thinking of you like that,” he admits. His reactions to her are stronger than they probably should be, but it might make sense given the circumstances. It feels like the only thing he has in the world is _her_. Like it is them against the world.

“I don’t need anyone going protective alpha male on me, okay?”

“I wouldn’t,” he promises.

“I’ve been taking care of myself for my whole life.”

“I get that. I just… Don’t you sometimes wish you had help?”

“Yes.” She shrugs. “And I _have_ had help.”

“Having a partner or a team...it’s different,” he suggests.

Skye opens her mouth, like she’s preparing to say something, but her brows draw together and she shakes her head.

“What?”

“I just… Nothing.”

She looks...careful, and he thinks he gets it.

“I ran away from my team. That’s what you’re going to point out. How great could having a partner be if I’m in this position.”

“No, see, I _didn’t_ say that because I thought it would be a low blow.”

“You’re not wrong.” Coulson closes his eyes.

“Are you sure…” Skye cuts herself off, makes another false start. “I’d never tell anyone that they’re wrong to leave a situation where they felt unsafe. Or where they felt they were being lied to. But I guess, if you trusted these people…”

“Then am I really sure they’re so bad?”

“Are you?”

Coulson swallows, and shakes his head.

“May, she’s my most senior agent, has been my friend for almost thirty years. When she was going through her divorce, she slept on my couch for a month. And then I found out that she had been spying on me, sending information back to headquarters. She was purposely hiding information about what they did to me.”

“Did she tell you why?”

“Does it matter why?”

“Maybe not.”

“But you’re thinking that there are aliens and bringing me back from the dead, and maybe normal rules don’t apply.”

“I’m saying that whatever choice you need to make for yourself is the right one,” she says, reaches out and rests a hand on his arm. “Only you know what’s best for you, Phil. And maybe these answers don’t matter right now, but maybe they will some day.”

He nods, looks down to where her hand is circling his wrist.

“You’re good at this,” he tells her.

“What?”

“Talking. Listening.”

“Oh, I’ve worked at a lot of women’s shelters.”

Coulson swallows and turns his palm under hers, curls his wrist to he can grab her hand.

“You’re remarkable.”

Skye smiles at that — flattered and pleased — and he can’t help but return it. Again, her smile grows, as though seeing him smile is it’s own source of happiness, and he’s a little breathless at how completely gorgeous she is. Her eyes drop, and he thinks she might be staring at his lips, which throws him for a loop — he’s mostly sure that can’t be right.

“You found food?”

Skye’s eyes dart back up to his, and she smiles awkwardly, extracts her hand from his, backs away from him just slightly.

“Yeah.” She passes out sandwiches and bags of popcorn, and there’s a long silence between them as they eat. The landscape rolls by, growing more flat and uninteresting, but the sky is starting to turn pink as the sun sets.

“So, like, did you meet Thor?” The awkwardness falls away as Coulson tells her his stories of the Avengers.

  
  


—

  
  


They’ve managed to fold down the bed, and Skye has darted out of the room to use the bathroom, so Coulson takes the chance to change into sweats. He moves fast, not wanting a repeat of the previous night, and is fully redressed by the time she walks back in.

Their car seems absolutely tiny now that the bed is down. And the bed seems absolutely tiny — definitely smaller than a queen.

“I can sleep out in the main car,” he suggests.

“Why would you do that?”

“So you can have the bed.”

“I don’t _want_ the bed if it means making you sleep sitting up in public.”

“Skye —”

“ _Phil_. If you’re uncomfortable —”

“I’m not. I just figured that you —”

“I’m not.”

There’s a long silence between them, and then Coulson nods.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean —”

“Look, if I’m ever uncomfortable, I’ll tell you.”

He nods, a little off balance, as they climb into the bed.

Coulson tries, at first, to keep his distance. He hugs the edge of the bed, shrinks away from the welcoming warmth of her body. It’s Skye who huffs out a laugh and pulls him up against her.

“It was fine last night. It will be fine tonight. You need to relax, Phil.”

“Yeah, probably.”

Skye laughs behind him, and the hand on his arm curves around his body.

He breathes in deeply, relaxes to her touch.

“Why are you doing this?”

She tenses against him, and he lays a hand over hers, trying to silently tell her that he doesn’t mean to make her move.

“Maybe I just wanted to help someone who needs it?”

“And what do you need?”

With her body pressed against his, with him holding her hand to his chest, it comes across much more suggestive than he intends.

Skye laughs quietly against his back.

“Easy there, Phil.”

Her voice is sweet and good natured, and he doesn’t feel the need to defend himself as she snuggles into him.

“Maybe I just need this,” she finally answers.

It's not a lie, but it's not the whole truth, either. But as he starts to drift to sleep, Coulson really doesn’t care that much about whatever Skye is hiding. 


	6. 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The events of season one start catching up to Coulson and Skye.

“...so we leaked _everything_ anonymously.”

“And he’s still in jail.”

“ _Yup_.”

She looks ridiculously proud of herself, which he doesn’t blame her for at all, since it’s impressive and she’s responsible for getting a terribly corrupt politician off the scene. Coulson can’t help but smile.

“You’re getting pretty good at the smiles,” Skye tells him, bumping her shoulder against his upper arm. She’s grinning up at him, and the nervous energy that’s been bubbling around her since they got into Austin two hours ago seems to settle.

They’re walking the three blocks from the motel room he’s rented — it’s small, nondescript, but also in a busy area, making it a good place to disappear — to a local restaurant that Skye has assured him is ‘a breakfast institution,’ located in a run-down, re-purposed house.

“So the two of you did a lot of those kind of ops together?”

She sort of snickers at “ops,” but nods.

“Yeah. I guess we were a team?” There’s an awkward pause. “On and off.”

It occurs to him suddenly — and he’s really stupid for not having realized this before — that he’s about to meet Skye’s boyfriend. Or, her on and off boyfriend. The idea sits uncomfortably in his stomach; it’s a sick, sinking feeling that is completely irrational.

Awkward silence falls between them, and he doesn’t exactly know how to fill it. Luckily, he doesn’t have to, as he finds himself pulling open the old, creaking door and ushering her into the restaurant.

He starts smirking as they walk inside and he sees none other than Miles Lydon sitting at a battered old table fitted with three mismatched chairs. Miles has chosen to take the seat that puts his back closest to the corner, and Coulson wonders if that’s intentional or instinctual.

As though he senses her presence, Miles looks up to greet Skye, but closes down at seeing Coulson. He stands immediately — somewhere between angry and terrified, clearly attempting to display his height and what he probably thinks is a physical advantage.

“What do you want with her?” Miles looks past Skye and addresses only Coulson.

Skye frowns at Miles, turns the frown on Coulson, and seems to catch on at the sight of his smirk.

“I’ve met this guy before,” Miles tells her. “What does he want with you?”

She looks back at Coulson and his smirk melts into a sympathetic wince. It strikes him how much it will crush her that someone she has trusted has betrayed the value system she holds so dear.

He can relate.

There’s a long beat as Skye sizes up Miles, and Miles looks completely confused about what’s happening.

“You _sold_ information.” Her voice drips with disgust, and Couslon watches Miles sort of crawl into himself. He must be around ten years older than Skye (which means Miles must have been approaching 30 when Skye met him at 17, though there are a lot of reasons he has no room to judge), and that makes it especially amusing to see the younger man almost cower in the face of Skye’s wrath.

“I thought it was harmless.”

“Are you _fucking_ kidding me? You thought it was harmless to _sell information_?”

“Well how was I supposed to guess that an organization that does research on Centipedes was actually evil?”

Coulson catches the look of horror on Skye’s face, though she quickly masters it. Skye knows something about Centipede; Skye knows what this means and she knows how bad it is. Whatever she’s been hiding from him might have something to do with Raina and the Clairvoyant, though it’s immediately obvious that it isn’t an alliance with them.

She glances around the restaurant, at the old tables — mostly empty at 8am on a weekday — and brightly colored walls, before she sits down and lowers her voice.

“I don’t care that you didn’t know who they were. You _know_ people don’t pay money for information for _good_ reasons.”

Coulson takes the only remaining seat — the one that’s most exposed and not his favorite — and sits back from the table to let Skye and Miles talk.

“It was a million dollars,” Miles defends himself, and Skye’s anger is palpable.

“How could you _possibly_ think that the fact that it’s a whole _lot_ of money makes it _better_ that you sold out?”

“I didn’t sell out! Do you know what I could have done with that money?”

“Do you know what that money cost? You helped kill an innocent man!”

She looks at Coulson for confirmation, and Coulson nods, once.

“Skye. I did it for us. For you.”

Coulson has only known her for three days, and he could have told Miles that associating Skye with a decision that violated her deeply held principles wasn’t going to be a good tactic.

She scowls at him and stands up, stalks away from the table. Coulson is about to stand up and walk after her, but he sees that she’s headed for the ladies room.

He and Miles sit at the table in awkward silence, broken only when the waitress approaches the table and asks to take a drink order.

When she returns some minutes later with mugs of coffee, Skye still hasn’t returned.

“I’m going to go find her,” Coulson offers.

“I should go,” Miles interrupts, but Coulson is already standing up.

“That doesn’t seem like the best idea.”

Miles nods sadly at that, and Coulson heads back the way Skye left.

He knocks on the bathroom door softly, and calls her name.

“It’s Coul—” He pauses. “Phil.”

“Coul Phil?”

Her eyes are a little red-rimmed when she opens the door, and he’s relieved to see that the restroom is a single bathroom. He steps inside after her, and watches as she slides deadbolt shut behind them.

“You really are a G-Man, huh? Everybody calls you Coulson?”

“Or Agent Coulson. Tony Stark always thought my first name was Agent.”

“Agent Coulson,” she tries it out, and shakes her head. “Doesn’t suit you.” She’s trying to smile, to fill the room with a light mood, and it isn’t working.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I…” She shakes her head.

“Your closest friend betrayed your trust. It’s…”

He doesn’t know what to say about it, actually.

Skye reaches forward then and sets a hand on his wrist, and he’s not sure if she’s drawing comfort or offering it.

“It really, really sucks, huh?”

“Yeah.”

It’s inadequate, but there aren’t really words for the feeling that your whole world is collapsing around you.

He thinks she might start crying again, so he draws her into a hug, presses her body up against his. It’s pretty great — comforting and safe — and Skye sighs into his neck as she hugs back.

“Thanks,” she whispers, though she makes no move to pull back.

“For what?”

“Just...being here.”

“I should be the one thanking you, remember? I wouldn’t have the first clue how to get a fake ID.”

She nods then, and pulls back with a frown.

“We still need him for that,” she acknowledges sadly.

“He didn’t know what he was doing,” Coulson offers in his defense.

“But he _did_. That’s the thing. He might not know what Centipede is, but —”

“But you do.”

His eyes narrow at her, and he feels guilty for the suspicion bubbling in his gut all of the sudden.

She shrinks back, and he feels even worse.

“Yeah,” she admits.

“How do you know about them?”

“There were people doing secretive things.”

“So you find people doing secretive things and then you spy on them?”

“Pretty much.” She shrugs, like it’s no big deal. It makes him inexplicably furious that she’s been running around trying to do the work of a SHIELD agent with none of the protection, none of the training, none of the weapons.

“Do you know how _dangerous_ that is?”

Skye sort of glares at him like he’s just asked a very stupid question, and he thinks of how _good_ she is at moving from place to place, at being unnoticed.

“I’m sorry,” he shakes his head, deflating a little bit. “I just… I didn’t realize you…” He draws in a deep breath. “Are you being followed?”

“No,” she shakes her head. “There was one incident in LA, but they’re not following me.”

“When someone crashed into your van…”

She nods, and he exhales heavily. If she’s been targeted as a threat, he has little doubt that she is _still_ being targeted as a threat.

He should be horrified for himself — that he’s hitched himself to a woman who might be in more danger than he is — but he’s only scared for her. Because, fuck, he _likes_ her. More than he should. And the first thing that comes to mind (he hates himself, but it’s the first thing) is that he needs to get in contact with May. He needs May’s help if Centipede is after Skye.

“How much do you know?”

“That they’re trying to make super soldiers that they control?”

“They’ve succeeded in that.”

“That they’re connected to this company, CyberTech, and to SHIELD somehow.”

“Their only connection to SHIELD is that my team has been chasing them down for months.”

“Yeah, but their encryption and their funding and their personnel…”

“You’re saying you think Centipede _is_ SHIELD?”

She pauses, swallows.

“It’s a theory.”

He wants to immediately discredit that theory, but he’s not sure on what grounds. Not on the grounds that SHIELD would never run secret operations of questionable morality.

“It’s just a theory,” she says again, emphasizing it. “That’s really all I know. They’re specifically looking for a way to make their soldiers basically immortal, like bring them back from…”

She gasps in a breath as she stares at him.

“They’re looking for you.”

“Yes,” he agrees. “They had me for a little while, but I didn’t give them what they wanted.”

They lapse into silence, though she stares at him almost fearfully.

“Did they torture you?”

He swallows, doesn’t answer, and she takes a deep, shaky breath before stepping back into his arms. Her hands stroke up his back, as though she’s soothing him, and his arms squeeze her to him, accepting the comfort gladly.

It’s more than a little shocking when her lips land at the side of his neck and kiss a soft trail up to his ear. The shock wears off really quickly, though, replaced by a pleasant tingle that runs down his spine.

Coulson can’t hold back a moan when her lips meet his earlobe and she nips gently on the skin.

“Okay?”

“ _Skye_ ,” he whispers her name, unable to form any other answer.

“Phil,” she answers, a soft whisper in his ear that makes him moan again.

She pulls back then, and he leans forward to kiss her — except that a knock on the bathroom door interrupts them.

“ _Skye? Are you still in there?”_

She pulls away from him at the sound of Miles’s voice, her expression somewhere between wistful and guilty.

“We need to finish this with him. Get our IDs.”

“And then what?”

“I don’t know.”

She’s honest, at least.


	7. 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Is it plotty as Season 1 catches up to them, or is this really just an excuse for porn? Watch me flail about as I figure out what the hell I'm doing! Or tell me what you want! I'm sort of open to ideas.

They have to stop by the university campus to meet Miles’s contact, and Skye drags him into a nearby restaurant for lunch. Breakfast hadn’t really happened, after all. The meeting with Miles had been fast and terse, and then Skye had left the restaurant as quickly as possible. Coulson had been the one to hang back, had been the one to actually feel a fraction of sympathy for Miles. Not that he’d defend what Miles had done, but if he were the one that had pissed off Skye that much, he thinks he’d be pretty destroyed.

“ _I’m sorry, you know,” Miles had said to him. “I think about that every day.”_

“ _As you should.” But Coulson hadn’t meant it coldly. “When we make a mistake, it’s supposed to stay with us.”_

“ _You’re speaking from experience.”_

_Coulson’s reply had just been a raised eyebrow._

“ _Skye doesn’t know about that, you know. Skye doesn’t make mistakes. She’s never done anything that wasn’t the right thing. I think the idea of not doing the right thing is...nonsensical to her.”_

“ _I can see that.” Coulson smiled fondly. “Take care, Mr. Lydon.”_

“ _Take care of her.”_

“ _She’s the one taking care of me.”_

“ _Well, then, return the favor. She has the tendency to get in over her head.”_

“ _I’m getting that.”_

Their location for lunch is just as informal as the rundown breakfast joint had been. It’s just one room filled to what seems like over-capacity — it’s a good level of noise, he thinks. Enough that their conversation won’t stand out, not so much that they won’t be able to hear each other.

“All vegetarian?”

“Yeah. This is the place that will make you like tofu,” she promises, and Coulson raises an eyebrow at her.

“In Texas?”

“We’re _not_ in Texas, Phil,” she corrects him. “We’re in _Austin_.”

He nods once, amused, and the hostess points them towards an empty table in the corner.

There’s some chat over orders, over vegetables and sauces and his general ambivalence towards soybeans.

Once orders are placed, though, silence falls and he leans forward to lessen the space between them. He wants to pretend this counts as remotely private.

“Are you okay?”

She smiles at the question and shrugs her shoulders. He thinks she’s going to leave it at that, but then she meets his eyes and frowns.

“No,” comes the answer, finally. “I’m not.”

He feels strangely flattered that Skye would admit that to him. One of the first things he had noticed about her is her tendency to play down her own pain, her own trauma. It’s nice to feel like she trusts him with this.

“Are you going to tell me that it gets better?” She asks the question as she tilts her head to the side, and he almost laughs.

“I wouldn’t know.”

She draws in a breath, opens her mouth, but is cut off when a young woman hurriedly places two plates of brown rice in front of them and then races over to another table.

“This city isn’t renowned for great service, is it?”

“Not so much,” she agrees. “I kind of like it. I don’t like the idea of paying someone to pretend to be my friend.”

He laughs at that, and Skye smiles proudly.

“You look much better than you did three days ago,” she tells him, eyes carefully searching his face.

“I feel much better,” he admits.

“So maybe it does get better?”

“I’ve had you, though,” he tells her, probably too honest. “You’re stuck with just me.”

“That doesn’t seem so bad.” Her grin is sweet and flirty, and he can’t help smiling back.

Their eyes meet and hold, and his whole body flushes at the memory of her lips on his neck, at the memory of how _close_ he was to kissing her.

“I’m glad,” he replies, sort of...lamely.

It makes her smile at him — part amusement and part pity, but he really doesn’t mind either one.

He clears his throat, though, and turns the subject to safer areas, which are technically more dangerous areas.

“How long were you following Centipede?”

“When I made contact with the hooded hero, I had been tapping their security cameras and doing audio recordings for a few months.”

“And when they moved out of LA?”

“I had an exploit to their system by then. So even when I didn’t know where they were, I could find things. Like that whoever’s in charge is always on the move.”

“The Clairvoyant,” Coulson says.

“Yeah, I… Do you know who that is?”

“No. Not even the people who were holding me had actually met him.”

Skye doesn’t say anything, but her eyes run over his face, focusing on the barely-there visible reminders of his ordeal.

“You said you thought they were related to SHIELD…”

“Yeah. I don’t have proof, if that’s what you mean. It’s a hunch, you know?”

“You think SHIELD is corrupt.”

“Or that there are corrupt people in SHIELD,” she corrects him, and he’s sort of startled by it, by her willingness to allow that SHIELD might not be rotten. “What? I mean, clearly it’s not all bad.” She gestures at him, as though he’s proof of that, and he can’t help but smile.

“I think that’s a big change in your beliefs for just a few days.”

“Well, it’s been an eventful few days.”

They lock eyes again, and for the umpteenth time, he’s unbelievably glad he ran into her. He would generally say that his luck is not that good.

“Were you looking for me on that bus?” The question has been on his mind, though at this point he doesn’t really care.

Skye shakes her head.

“Dumb luck.” Her answer makes him smile. “I was messing around on the SHIELD website, trying to figure out if someone was following me, and there was a picture. And then I looked up…”

“And there I was,” he fills in.

“It was fate,” she tells him, completely silly, but it makes him smile too much.

Their mutual smiles are only interrupted when their food is set down between them. Hers is a mass of vegetables piled on a plate, his is a neater arrangement of tofu ringed with steamed broccoli. They grab plastic chopsticks from a container on the table and dig in, and Coulson is pleasantly surprised by his first bite.

“Told you,” Skye taunts him around a piece of sweet potato.

He nods, and they eat several bites in silence. It’s clear that for Skye, this place is important.

“Did you come here a lot when you lived here?”

“Yeah,” she answers. “The owner gives out food to people who need it.” Skye tilts her head towards the door, and Coulson watches the old woman playing hostess pass a plastic bag to two young men in grungy clothing. “I needed it a lot. And when I had money, I spent a lot of it here.”

His jaw tightens at the thought of Skye being penniless, of Skye being homeless, and she shakes her head.

“You don’t have to be so bothered by it.”

“I can’t help it,” he claims. “Wouldn’t you be bothered if I told you about the days that Centipede held me?”

She frowns, and he watches as her eyes drag up his face to the cut above his right eye that’s finally about healed.

“Yes.”

Her left hand slides across the table and touches his right wrist, and he immediately drops his chopsticks, turns his hand, and links their fingers together.

There’s really nothing to say that isn’t said by the play of her fingers against his hand and the way she holds his gaze. He smiles at her, a quirk of his lips that feels flirty, and she returns it while squeezing his hand.

Moving together, they separate their hands and go back to eating. She tells him more about living in Austin, and they talk about the places he’s called home. It’s strange, to be a stage where he’s still learning such basic getting-to-know-you information about a person for whom he already has such intense feelings.

It’s not bad, though.

  
  


—

  
  


They get back to their motel room late, and after a day of experiencing the Austin Capital Metro transit system. Traveling cross-country and then cross-city on public transportation has done a lot to remind him how much he loved the Bus. (He _really_ loved the Bus, and it’s funny to think back to a time when he was so guilelessly happy at SHIELD.)

While he toes off his shoes and stretches out on one of the queen beds, Skye takes a seat at the desk and begins pouring over SHIELD websites. He doesn’t understand the trackers she has in place, but she’s able to follow the links of their investigation into him.

After a few minutes, she turns to him with a smile.

“The good news is that it seems like there are more important things happening than the hunt for you.”

He smiles, though he can’t help the prickle of worry at the back of his neck. It feels selfish, suddenly, that he abandoned his team, especially if big things are happening. It’s the first time since he ran that he’s been able to think that way — about his team, about something other than what was done to him.

“We could try to contact them, you know,” she offers, reading his thoughts too well. “I could find a way to do it securely. If you think they would…”

“Maybe,” he answers, and Skye smiles. “Not now, though.”

She nods, but seems pleased with him, and he supposes that she’ll be able to make contact with Miles again eventually. It’s good, he thinks. He wants that for her, for her to have people.

He watches her, backlit by the lamp above the desk, as she brushes her fingers through her hair. She’s gorgeous, really. Everything about her is gorgeous, and his thoughts turn back to kissing her. Again. It has happened with alarming frequency through the day, and he’d feel guilty for thinking about her that way if he weren’t also remembering the feel of her lips on his neck. He won’t push anything, though. It’s not exactly that he’s in a position of power — after all, as much as he’s paying for everything, he’d be pretty lost without the SHIELD intelligence and the perfect fake IDs she’s lined up for him. But he must be at least twice her age, and however much she seems to like flirting with him, he could never assume that she would want him like he wants her.

But, god, he _wants_ her. He wants her easy smile, and he wants the way she looks at him when he smiles back, and he wants the sardonic tilt of her mouth when she talks about herself. He wants her body pressed up against his again.

As though she can read his thoughts, she blushes slightly and turns her eyes down.

Coulson clears his throat, tries to back away from making her uncomfortable.

“Did you become interested in SHIELD because of Centipede?”

“No, the other way around.”

“So what made you start researching SHIELD?”

She frowns at that, suddenly closing down, and Coulson’s jaw tightens.

“You’re keeping more things from me,” he accuses.

“I’m not allowed to have any secrets?” She’s trying to make it a joke, and he frowns at her.

“You know everything about me.”

“It’s personal. It’s not...it’s not about this.”

He pauses, then, takes a breath and relaxes his jaw. He has no right, not really, to demand that she tell him this. The fact of the matter is that he trusts her anyways, so he can’t even claim it as a matter of good faith.

“Okay.” He nods once. Swallows. Sits back on the bed.

“Okay?”

“I trust you.”

There’s a long silence between them, during which she seems to be searching his face.

“You are so, so stupid.” The words are derisive, but she looks sort of like she’s about to start crying. She rolls her eyes, more at herself than at him, and then dips a finger inside of her shirt.

It’s not a terribly sensual movement, but he can’t help the way his eyes follow her finger as she tugs down the already-low neckline enough for him to make out the top of her bra. Then she dips two fingers lower, and pulls them out with an SD card held between them. She slides it into her laptop, and then picks up the computer and walks to the bed.

“This is everything I know about myself.”

The words are a little detached, but he can see how hard this is for her. He takes the laptop from her as she sits down beside him, resting her back on the headboard next to his. 

On the screen before him are a few photographs, obviously from stakeouts of SHIELD spaces, but it’s really just one document. Completely redacted. By SHIELD.

Just like his bag, but so much less. So, so much less.

Coulson swallows back a sudden emotional reaction — it’s beyond unfair that SHIELD has kept this woman’s identity from her.

“You were put in the orphanage by SHIELD.”

“Yes.”

“And that’s all…”

“I’ve been looking forever.” Her voice hitches, and he fears she’s about to cry. “Really forever. It’s why I got interested in SHIELD in the first place.”

“I’m so sorry.” It’s not a trite apology at all; it’s from the bottom of his heart. He’s spent so many hours trying to dig into the truth about himself, and here Skye has been doing the same for _years_. Doing the same with so little to go on, with no one to support her, while living out of a van.

She nods, and he wants to hug her, but he isn’t entirely sure it would be welcome.

Coulson shakes his head and scans back down the black bars, as though it could possibly reveal something else to him. “I would help you with this if I could.”

“I know.”

He doesn’t know why, but it’s her faith in him that makes him snap the laptop shut, set it on the side table, and then pull her against him.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers into the top of her head. “You deserve so much better than that.”

She burrows her face into his neck, and he shivers slightly at the feel of a deep breath.

“I figured you would say that SHIELD probably has its reasons.”

He presses his lips against her hair.

“They do,” he promises. “They probably think they’re good reasons, too.”

“But it’s not fair to keep something like this from me.” She says it quietly — a conviction, but also something she’s testing him with, something he can tell she needs him to agree to.

He tugs gently at her hair, pulling her back enough that he can meet her eyes.

“It’s not okay to keep this from you, Skye. Even if what you found was terrible —”

He’s shocked by the sudden press of her mouth against his, but he’s still able to respond almost immediately. His hand on the back of her head tugs her closer as he parts his lips beneath hers, answering her kiss eagerly. The slide of her lips over his is addictive, and he curls his fingers into her hair, lightly scratches his nails across her scalp, as he holds her as close as he can. When she pulls back a fraction to suck in a breath, he _whines_ — there’s not another word for it, he _whines_.

It earns him a giggle against his mouth, and then Skye’s hands on his cheeks pushing him back.

“Phil,” she calls his name, and it’s only when his eyes snap open that he realizes they had been shut.

“Hmm,” is all he answers, his eyes hovering at her lips.

“Hey.” Her fingers run over his face, around his eyes, across his forehead. “It’s been a long time since you kissed someone, huh?”

“That obvious?” He feels a little sheepish, but Skye smiles warmly and then swings a leg over his lap. “I haven’t been close to anyone since…”

She nods, once, and cups his cheeks again before leaning into kiss him. Her fingers hold him in place, force him to keep the slow, deep pace of her lips against his. Coulson relaxes against her as she begins to explore his mouth, lets his hands wander over her back and up her sides, just feeling the dip of her waist and the swell of her breasts in the ceaseless movement of his hands.

He’s already rock hard when her hips grind forward against him, and he groans into her mouth. His softly exploratory hands move to grip firmly onto her hips, and he guides her to grind against him again. She takes the hint and begins to move on top of him, her hips a perfect counterpoint to the movements of her lips and tongue. It’s embarrassing how good it feels, how sure he is that he could get off just from this, and he pulls his mouth away from hers, buries his face in her neck, so he can focus on not coming.

“Kiss me there,” Skye whispers, as his mouth lands at the juncture of her neck and shoulder, so he throws himself into placing a series of kisses and soft bites up to her ear that leave her writhing on top of him.

When he bites down under her ear, Skye’s hips stutter against his, and it takes him a moment to realize that she’s coming. It takes nothing — a single answering grind of his hips upwards — to follow her.

“Skye,” he whispers her name as he comes down. “Christ.”

And he’s definitely too old for dry humping on the bed, but Skye’s soft kiss makes it hard to feel uncomfortable — even with the mess in his pants.

She sort of giggles as she slides off of him and falls to the bed.

“That was fun.”

“Hmm,” he all he answers as he grins stupidly at her. “I should clean up.”

“Then come to bed?”

He nods, not at all displeased with her quiet assumption that they’ll share. 


	8. 8.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which sexual content happens, and Phil Coulson is sort of desperate and embarrassing. (More plot is coming, though.)

When he stirs awake, the first thing he notices is that the bed is cold beside him. As much as he immediately misses her presence, as much as he wants to press himself up against her again, he’s more than a little relieved for the distance. He’s almost certain he’s embarrassing himself with this girl, almost certain that he should have kept his distance yesterday after the drama with Miles. The fact that they didn’t go further than grinding together on the bed last night is a comfort — he hasn’t taken advantage of her in any unforgivable way.

He finally opens his eyes and sees her sitting in the desk chair, staring at her laptop. Rather than the dark coding screens he’s grown used to seeing, though, there appears to be a photo pulled up, and he can pretty easily guess the subject.

Although he knows he should alert her to his presence, he stays silent instead and watches. She’s basically curled into the chair, her chin resting on her knees, and in that position she manages to look very small and very young.

And then he realizes that she’s crying.

“Skye,” he whispers her name, watches as she startles slightly before minimizing the window in front of her.

“Morning,” she answers softly, dragging her right hand across her eyes.

He wants to ask if she’s okay, but there’s not really a point when he knows the answer. Skye stands up and crosses to the bed, where she sits down gingerly beside him. Her eyes are red and watery, and his heart hurts for her.

“What can I do for you?”

She lets out a sob at his question, and Coulson reaches for her. As much as he wants to hug her, though, he just rests his hand on her elbow from his reclining position. When she doesn’t shy away, he runs his hand up to the cap sleeve of her nightshirt, then down to her wrist.

It’s Skye who takes the initiative to slide down the bed and curl in next to him.

“Is this okay?” Her voice is quiet on the question, and Coulson clutches her to his chest.

“Of course it is.”

“You just seem so skittish —”

“Because I’m an old man compared to you, Skye. And you can’t possibly —”

“Phil. You’re going to have to trust me to know what I want, okay?”

He nods and relaxes on the bed, feels her do the same. The comfort she takes in him transitions into something else, though, so slowly that he’s not sure when her hand stops clutching at his chest for comfort and starts caressing him instead. When her fingers skate down his chest, though — headed towards the waistband of his sweats — he stops her, grasps her hand and pulls it back up so he holds it over his heart.

“You just broke up with your boyfriend. I don’t want to take advantage of your feelings.”

Skye nods, but when she looks up at him he thinks she seems vaguely amused.

“Miles and I haven’t had a relationship that you would _break up_ in a few years. Not since I left for LA, okay? But he was still important to me.”

“I’m sorry,” he sighs and rests his hand on her back.  

“You’re not just worried about taking advantage of me, though,” she informs him, tilts her head to examine his face closely. “You _think_ that’s what you’re worried about, but you’re worried that if we push things right now, that it will be about him and not about...us.”

He doesn’t know exactly how to respond to that because the truth is that she isn’t wrong. He’s started thinking, much too quickly, about staying with her. They haven’t discussed it really, but it’s completely irrational to be thinking of her like that, to be thinking of _them_ like that — like a way to spend the rest of his life.

“You’re a little afraid of me.” She smirks as she says it. “It’s kind of cute.”

“You’re almost too good to be true,” Coulson tells her, which earns him a wide smile. “I’m afraid that the second I get used to you, you’re going to disappear.”

Skye shifts against him so that they’re face to face, and she hovers barely over him.

“No one’s ever thought I was too good to be true before.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

He thinks she’s about to lean in and kiss him, but instead she lets her weight sink into him and presses her face into his neck. The rush of air past his skin at her deep inhalation and exhalation makes him shiver.

Coulson’s other hand lands on her back as she snuggles on top of him, and he begins drawing wide circles that range from her lower back up to her neck. Skye arches into his touch when his fingers brush skin — towards the base of her scalp and just above the waist of her sweatpants where her shirt is folded up. He slips his fingers under her shirt and strokes the bare skin of her back, unbelievably soft under his calloused fingers. His dick is already half hard at the feeling of her body pressed against his, and when she lets out a tiny moan as his fingers drift towards the side of her breast, he has to clench his jaw against the throb of arousal that surges through him.

“What makes me too good to be true?”

She asks the question to his shoulder, doesn’t move her face or look at him, and the vulnerability in it brings him up short. Coulson presses his hand into her lower back, holding her against him, and he remembers the look on her face as she joked about what was wrong with her that had made every foster family send her back to the orphanage after a few months.

“You try to do the right thing,” he answers, choosing his words carefully. “When we met, I asked you why you would help me, and you said...because I needed it.”

“Who wouldn’t help someone who needed it?”

“So many people. Most people.”

“That’s sad.”

“But you…you’re better. You’re remarkable.”

“Hmm.” She nuzzles her face into his shoulder.

“I remember the first time I listened to one of your podcasts.”

“You listened to my podcasts?”

She smiles up at him, and he returns the smile sheepishly.

“I told you we were looking for you. When I found your podcasts, I listened to a few.” Most of them, really.

“You sat around listening to my podcasts, pretending it was work.” She’s openly teasing him, but the smile on her face says she’s flattered.

“I was starting to have questions about SHIELD,” he admits. “A lot of what you were saying really resonated with me, and you were just clearly so...good.”

“You were _totally_ a fan of my show.”

Coulson can feel himself blush, and it makes him frown. He turns then, sort of bullies Skye onto her side so that he can spoon up to her back and not have to look into her face while he admits embarrassing things.

“Yes,” he admits when she can’t see his face anymore. “I was a fan of your show.” Coulson wraps his arm around her and kisses the back of her head, and then near her ear. “I grew up reading Saul Alinsky, you know. And I was finishing high school when Reagan fired the striking air traffic controllers.”

“You were a radical, huh?”

Skye shifts in front of him, and her ass rubs up against his dick — it’s clearly unintentional, but it still makes him unable to speak for a long moment.

“Sympathetic, at least. I went to protests.”

“And how often did you listen to me?”

“Too often,” he admits in a quiet whisper in her ear. “I liked to listen to your voice, especially when you read poetry.”

He can feel her shudder at his words — at his breath in her ear — and then she squirms against him, pushes her hips back against his very much on purpose this time. Her satisfaction when her ass connects with his erection is almost palpable, and she starts rocking her hips against his — slow and easy.

“You make it sound like my podcast was sexy.”

“You whispering Neruda in my ear late at night?”

She lets out a startled laugh at that, and she stops rubbing herself back against him momentarily.

“I think I read _From the Heights of Macchu Picchu_ one time,” she defends herself.

“That was good,” he whispers. “But you read his love poetry, too.” It comes out almost accusatory.

“Not, like, all the time, though. If you replayed those episodes —”

“I _did_.”

He should shut himself up and he knows it, but Skye seems so flattered, so enamoured with his appreciation of her that he can’t stop himself from saying these stupid, embarrassing things. He had listened to her so many nights when he couldn’t sleep; had used her voice to drown out nightmares and bad thoughts.

“Hmm,” she sighs as her hips start to grind back against him again. “So you’re basically my number one fan. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It makes me sound like a stalker.”

“I’m the one who found you, remember?”

“Yes. Another thing that’s too good to be true.”

Skye tilts her head so that she can see him, so that their eyes lock in an intense exchange.

“You’re pretty great, Phil.”

“Because I’m your number one fan?”

“That doesn’t hurt,” she teases, and then leans back and kisses him quickly.

When she rolls back into place, pressing her back into his front, she also grabs hold of his right hand. Slowly, she guides it up under her shirt, and he lets himself be guided. Skye moves his hand up over her bare stomach until the tips of his fingers brush the the underside of her breasts. Coulson moans when she moves his fingers away, but he also doesn’t fight it, lets her move his fingers back down her stomach and then into the waist of her sweat pants.

Together, their hands slide under her panties, over the tangle of pubic hair, until she presses his fingers up against the hot, slick evidence of her arousal.

“Oh, fuck,” he groans into her, and if he still has serious thoughts about not crossing boundaries, he forgets them instantly as he lets her guide his index finger in tight circles over her clit. She shudders against him, and Skye pushes down on his finger, forcing the circles to become faster, harder.

As her breath starts coming in harsh pants, their fingers move faster and Coulson can’t stop himself from grinding shamelessly against her ass. She arches into him, though, welcoming it, until she’s moving with him as they move their fingers together between her legs.

When she finally comes, she arches her back enough to bring her lips up against his, and kisses him hard. He can feel her body pulsing under his finger, and can’t stop grinding himself against her as they kiss — messy and frantic and wonderful in a way he can’t remember sex being before.

“Phil,” she sighs against his lips as she comes down, her body still bowed across the bed. He’s achingly hard, still unable to stop grinding against her ass, as she starts to pull away. “I have condoms in my bag.”

He moans at the words. As much as he hates how _needy_ he sounds, though, he can’t help the eagerness with which he releases her, the eagerness with which he watches her progress across the room, the eagerness with which he takes in the sight of her stripping off her pajamas, the eagerness with which he does the same — though only for his sweats and boxers.

She’s stunning — golden skin and perfect breasts — and he rolls the condom over himself in a hurry, anticipating being able to touch her.

“Your shirt,” she requests, though, holding herself back.

It makes him hesitate, and Skye raises her eyebrows.

“I’ve already seen it, and I want to feel you against me.”

Like it’s perfectly normal. Perfectly logical. Coulson immediately complies, and is surprised when Skye once again backs herself up against him, so her back is pressed intimately to his chest, still on their sides. His left arm slides under her head and his right skids down her side, feeling out the curves of her body before skimming up to cup her breasts. She raises her leg and wraps it back around behind his, arches herself against him again, and then he’s _there_ , sliding into the heat between her legs.

It’s a tight squeeze — _so tight_ — and Coulson exhales harshly against the side of her head. There’s a hitch in Skye’s breath as she pushes herself back onto him, and when he’s completely buried inside her they moan in unison. He hasn’t been with anyone like this in so long; he hasn’t felt anything this blindingly good in _so long_ , and it’s all he can do to clutch her to his chest as she starts to move.

She’s the one who sets the pace, rocking herself back against him as her right hand continues working between her legs, and he’s extraordinarily grateful for the slow, easy nature of sex in this position. It’s almost too intense to handle, and he thinks that if she were moving on him with any speed at all, he’d be done in seconds.

“You remember any of those poems, Phil?”

He groans, curls himself around her so that his lips are right at her ear.

“ _I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair_ ,” he whispers. Skye moans softly at the first line, so he continues. It’s one of the few he’s probably memorized. “ _Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets./ Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day/ I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps_.”

Skye moans _loudly_ then, and he can feel her pulse around him as she rocks her hips back against him and speeds up the pace of her fingers. Coulson stays still, though — holds on, keeps going with the poem as a way of focusing, of keeping his thoughts away from the way Skye’s body feels against him and _around_ him. He speaks slowly, voice low and husky in her ear, through the final lines.

“ _And I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,/ hunting for you, for your hot heart,/ like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue_.”

It feels like minutes later that Skye finally stills against him, gasping for breath, though he can still feel her pulsing around his cock.

“That was incredible,” she whispers, and Coulson lets out a loud noise that might be laughter.

“Yes.”

She keeps moving, rocking her hips back against his in a slow easy pace that keeps him feeling two steps from orgasm. But now that he can breathe, now that he isn’t holding onto himself for dear life, he lets himself _enjoy_ her body. The hand that isn’t tucked under her head smoothes over every inch of bare skin he can reach, unsure of whether he most wants to touch her breasts or her waist or her neck or her thighs. He has no clue how much time passes before she pulls away from him and he groans pathetically at the loss of her, until she pushes him on his back and straddles him, lets him slip easily back inside of her.

“ _Fuck, Skye_ ,” he grunts as she settles on top of him.

“What do _you_ want to hear?” She rocks her hips over him and he almost loses it.

Coulson just grabs hold of her hips and starts to move underneath her as he shakes his head. She seems to get it, takes pity on the fact that if she whispers poetry to him he’ll come on the spot, and instead starts to move with him.

He has to fight not to lose himself in the moment — to stay with her, to pay attention to her expressions and the movements of her body.

“Let go, Phil,” she whispers.

He manages to shake his head as he bucks his hips under her, and Skye laughs.

“You’re a real gentleman, aren’t you?”

“What do you need?”

“For you to let go,” she answers.

Coulson laughs and then flips them on the bed, pausing to hitch Skye’s legs up around his waist.

“Letting go,” he whispers, then dives forward to kiss her as he pushes back inside.

Skye moans against his lips as he sinks all the way inside of her, and her feet scramble at his ass as she adjusts herself and pulls him slightly deeper.

“ _Go_.” She sounds desperate, and Coulson sets a hard, fast rhythm that Skye seems to instantly respond to. It’s gratifying that even as he pursues his own orgasm with single-minded intensity, she’s _with_ him — moving with him and moaning with him and falling apart with him.

Coulson pulls back to properly see her face, even as he tries to keep his rhythm, and watches as Skye blinks at him and then guides his lips to her neck. He smiles against her skin and begins to nip a trail up towards her ear, mimicking the sensations that got her off last night.

It works like a charm.

“Phil,” she calls his name, loud in this position, even though she was silent through her last orgasm. It gets louder as she repeats it and he feels her really start to come underneath him; Coulson drops his head next to hers and works his hips faster, struggling to hold off for as long as he can.

When he finally comes, it’s almost too intense. He’s barely aware of the way he repeats Skye’s name, panting desperately before he nearly collapses on top of her.

It’s possible he blacks out because the next thing he’s aware of is Skye cuddling into his chest. He runs his hands up her body, cups her shoulder blades and her upper arms and her neck and every part of her he can easily touch.

“Hi.” She pushes herself up so their eyes meet, and the sleepy, satiated look in her eye undoes him.

“Skye,” he sighs her name in greeting and then tugs her mouth down to his with a hand pressed to the back of her head.

They kiss lazily for several minutes, at which point Coulson becomes unpleasantly aware of the fact that he’s failed to properly take care of the condom. Skye laughs and wipes at the mess with a Kleenex she grabs from the side table before throwing it aside.

“Let’s get in the shower,” she suggests, pulling him forward and out of bed, “and then order in some lunch.”

Coulson follows her lead, almost boneless in his satiation as he follows her into the bathroom. He can’t help but wonder what he’s done to deserve this, to deserve her; he can’t shake the feeling that this — that she — really is too good to be true.

  
  



	9. 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’s not sure whether it’s more accurate to say that they fuck in between talking or that they talk in between fucking, but at the end of three days spent mostly in bed, he's figured a lot of things out.

After their shower they lay tangled together on the bed, naked skin pressed to naked skin, and Skye says something funny. He laughs.

As always, she grins at his laughter — looks proud of him and herself — and she touches his face with a gentle hand as she smiles. And just like that, he _needs_ her again. It’s ridiculous and embarrassing, to find himself hard and pressing into her thigh so soon, and he blushes when Skye laughs.

Coulson has played the part of awkward lover — has embarrassed himself — enough for one day, though, and he sets himself to dragging his lips down her neck, rolling her onto her back as he moves his mouth over her. There had been some exploration in the shower, feeling out and kissing more of the curves of her body, but that had been about lazy satiation. Now, every time his lips meet her skin, he can feel them both heat up.

Her nipples are hard, practically begging for his mouth, and he isn’t remotely gentle as he sucks at them, scraping them with his teeth. She goes wild at the sensation, runs her hands through his hair and holds his head to her breast. He spends ages there before finally sliding further down the bed and taking just a moment to run his hands over her bare legs.

And then, with little fanfare, he buries his face between her thighs, fingers pulling her labia apart as his tongue pushes up inside of her. She keens and raises her hips up, opening herself further to his ministrations. Coulson slides his tongue up to flicker over her clit and instead sinks two fingers inside of her, curling them up as he thrusts.

“Phil,” she grunts, her breath moving towards uncontrolled pants.

He loves this feeling — has always loved this feeling — of being in control of a woman’s pleasure, of pushing her higher and harder. So it’s a little shocking when, before he can feel her come against his tongue, Skye grips the back of his head and tugs him upwards.

“Kiss me,” she begs, and he doesn’t think twice before sliding up her body, dragging his face along her stomach to remove the more obvious wetness on his lips and chin, and kissing her deeply as he keeps thrusting his fingers inside of her.

She falls apart so quickly at that, as though his mouth against hers was the missing factor, and the thought of it makes him impossibly harder as he finger fucks her through her orgasm.

“Phil.” Her sigh is soft and breathy as she comes down, but he only stills his fingers for a moment before he starts to thrust again, watching her eyes to make sure it isn’t too much. “Oh, _fuck_ , Phil.”

 

—

 

They order pizza, and when it arrives, he answers the room door in pajama pants and a t-shirt while Skye skitters under the bed covers to cover her nudity.

“Take your clothes back off,” she orders him as he sets the box on the bed. He does as ordered, stripping down and crossing his legs as he leans against the headboard next to her. Part of him knows that he’s too old for this — too old to behave like a college student, like a twenty-something, eating greasy pizza naked in bed. Another part of him, a bigger part of him, feels like it’s perfect. Like it’s right.

“So, what does it mean to be Level 8 in SHIELD?”

He tenses for a moment, has a fleeting sensation of worry that he shouldn’t overshare about this stuff, but Skye rolls her eyes.

“I’m just making conversation, Phil. You don’t —”

“No, I’m sorry.” He shakes his head. “Every clearance level is earned through a combination of hours served and exams.”

“And the higher your level, the more stuff you know?”

“Right.”

He tells her more about his team than he means to as they eat, which leads to an inevitable discussion of what happened in South Ossetia.

Skye’s mouth is dropped in horror as she listens, as he explains what it means that there was no extraction plan. That he wasn’t told that there was no extraction plan.

“That makes it sound like your level puts a...a value on your life.”

Coulson nods, sadly, at that assessment.

“I think I started realizing it that day. On the one hand, I understand the practicality of the setup —”

“So that you can ensure that information stays safe?”

“From terrorists. From bad guys,” he defends, and Skye nods. “But you’re right. Fitz and Ward were deemed as expendable, in part because of their low level access.”

“I don’t believe in expendable people,” she tells him, and Coulson nods.

“I’m glad.”

Fitz’s death weighs heavily on him, this knowledge that had he figured these things out earlier he could have stopped it. Had he stood up to SHIELD protocol, had he questioned the system more…

Skye kisses his forehead, pulls him from his self-pity with tenderness.

“You’re a good man,” she assures him, and Coulson wants to believe her so much it hurts.

 

—

 

He wakes up the next morning to feel her lips wrapped around his cock, and he groans to alertness as he looks down to watch his shaft disappear into her mouth.

Skye raises her eyebrows at him, silently asking permission slightly after the fact, and Coulson runs a gentle hand through her hair in encouraging response.

Her mouth is wicked, and she goes down on him with a blinding single-mindedness that puts him at the center of her universe. He could get addicted to that feeling; it’s almost better than the physical pleasure.

“Skye, Skye...” He shamelessly moans her name, enjoying the feel of the letters in his mouth, the sound of it as he draws in shuddering breaths.

She keeps the pace slow — almost frustratingly slow — so that even as he feels himself on the cusp of orgasm, it still feels insurmountably far away.

“Skye, faster, please,” he begs her, rests his hand on the back of her head again in gentle persuasion. Of course, she pulls away.

“I’m not done, yet,” she informs him, as though this is a treat for her, something she wants to savor, and the idea of it makes his cock throb so hard he fears he’s coming.

She waits until he settles to sink her mouth back over him, and his cock throbs again; again he wonders if he’s coming. The sensation continues as she works her mouth over him slowly until he’s incoherent, falling apart on the bed above her, reduced to nothing but the ability to whimper her name.

 

—

 

“They were awful,” she tells him, from her position sprawled across the bed with her head in his lap. They’ve muted the news as conversation has grown more interesting, and Coulson runs his fingers through her hair gently.

“How awful?”

“I don’t know. Just imagine what living in an orphanage run by nuns would be like. You’ll probably get a pretty accurate picture.”

“You got told you were going to hell a lot, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.” She says it strangely — almost wistful, and he can guess that at one point it was a badge of honor. “They said that God was watching me, that God would punish me. God was basically a mean old man in the sky who hated me.”

“You became an atheist pretty fast, huh?”

Skye grins at him and nods her head.

“How can you not?”

“And that made you even more of a target?”

“I don’t know how many times they tried to beat Satan out of me.”

His fingers tighten a little too hard in her hair before he catches himself, and she raises a hand to rest on his arm.

“I didn’t mean to make it sound that bad,” she reassures him, and Coulson frowns. He hates it that every time she tells him something about her past, she backs off of it — feels the need to reassure him that it wasn’t as a bad as she makes it sound.

He’s been profiling people a long time, and he can’t help but paint such a vivid picture of her childhood. Of being physically and verbally abused, of being reminded by her caretakers that it wasn’t as bad as she thought it was, of having the events recast for her every time it happened. It makes him sick, but he swallows it down. He doesn’t see how it will do any good to approach her with it.

“And were foster homes better?”

“Most of them,” she agrees. “There were a lot of them that I was really sad to leave.”

“Hmm.” He tries to make a comforting sound as he plays with her hair, as he blocks out his anger that SHIELD had left her in such circumstances.

“You don’t have to feel guilty,” she informs him. He shakes his head because there’s no way for him _not_ to feel guilt.

“SHIELD did that to you.”

“Yeah. But my life isn’t terrible, Phil. I promise.”

She nuzzles against his naked thigh and Coulson buries his fingers in her hair, scratching softly against her scalp.

 

—

 

They manage to get dressed in the early evening and go out for dinner. There are a lot of little hole in the wall places on the busy section of Congress near their motel, and the walk and the fresh air are pleasant. So is strolling down the street with Skye’s hand in his.

It’s funny how much the small gesture means to him, given that he’s barely stopped touching her in the last forty eight hours, during which they haven’t actually left the hotel room. During which he’s only put on clothes to pay delivery men for beef with broccoli and Pizza and, inexplicably, fresh baked cookies.

He’s starved for human contact in general, _has been_ starved for human contact since well before his death. He and Audrey hadn’t called it quits, but they had cooled things down substantially in the year before the Battle of New York and her return to Portland. He was lucky to get out there every two months, and even when he’d been with her he’d always been more reserved.

Sometimes he thinks that he’s lived his whole life being reserved. The constant _need_ he has for Skye and the fact that he’s grown comfortable with it, the vulnerability inherent in giving himself over to someone else so completely, don’t bother him like they would have in the past.

They’re walking towards the capitol building, lit up against the twilight, and even within the hustle and bustle of people around them it manages to feel romantic.

“What?”

Skye smiles at him, her eyes on level with his thanks to the boots she’s wearing with her short red dress, and it alerts him to the fact that he’s been staring over at her perhaps more than he should.

“You’re beautiful,” he informs her, and she laughs.

“That’s what you’re thinking about so hard?”

He grins at her — a purposefully sexy flirty grin, purposefully suggestive and heavy-lidded and the kind of thing he’s always been good at — and Skye laughs.

“Easy there, charm school,” she teases, bumping her hip against his.

His purposefully sexy smile melts into something more real, and Skye’s own teasing fades as she looks into his eyes. There’s a brief sizzle between them, and Skye pushes up just enough to press her lips to his.

Coulson responds instantly, wrapping his arms around her waist and returning her kiss with probably more passion than is strictly appropriate for an outdoor public space. Skye, though, drags him backwards off the sidewalk and pushes him up against a brick wall. He parts his legs so that she can fit herself in between them as she kisses him deeply and thoroughly.

It’s juvenile and quite literally dirty and something he is _definitely_ too old for, and it’s also one of the most enjoyable moments of his remembered life.

 

—

 

When they get back to the room, he presses her against the door as he fumbles with his keycard, laying kisses along the back of her neck, and then against the inside of the door once it swings shut behind him. Her breasts press into the flat surface as he grinds against her ass, and she _whimpers_ at the sensation.

“Phil,” she whispers as she presses back against him, and it’s entirely too much to handle. Coulson flips up her dress and drags her panties down her legs, only bothering to guide them over her right boot. His fingers are between her legs instantly, and he’s gratified to find her wet for him.

His fingers slip over her clit, working in fast tight circles, but she grunts and reaches behind her, gripping at his back.

“Fuck me,” she growls against the door, the crassness of the order its own turnon.

Coulson fumbles a condom out of his wallet before dropping his pants and boxers around his ankles, so he’s pressing up inside of her less than thirty seconds later.

She groans and adjusts herself in front of him, and he can tell when she gets the angle just right because of the long, low moan at his next stroke.

“Faster,” she begs, and he instantly complies, pumping hard and fast as she presses her hands into the door to keep her position.

He watches as she redistributes her weight on her left hand in order to slide her right between her legs; he can feel the effects of her rubbing her clit when she pulses around him.

“Skye,” he pants her name into her ear as he fucks her, and he can see the effects of his breath there — the shudder down her back and the gooseflesh on her neck.

She comes first, just barely beating him as he pushes into her and then forces them both up against the door before he loses his balance as he comes.

He kisses her neck — soft and sweet — as they catch their respective breaths.

 

—

 

They’re working on the bed again — not naked, or at least not entirely naked. He’s wearing an undershirt and boxers, while Skye has slipped into one of his white button-downs, held together by a single button just under her breasts.

“There’s no record of anything happening at the Bethesda location that day,” she tells him. “I just don’t see how this can be true.”

It frustrates him because what was the _point_ of working so hard for this file if it’s all turned out to be lies anyways?

“Do you think you can…”

He trails off because he’s not actually sure what he’s asking her. Can she solve all of his mysteries for him?

“Maybe,” she answers, as she clicks through a bunch of filenames that he doesn’t understand. “I’m looking for things that happened on the date indicated by this report. Any SHIELD facilities that show someone coming or going...anything big happening.”

“That’s going to pull up a lot of results,” he suggests, inanely, and Skye smiles at him — sort of pitying.

“Yeah. I’m not going to find this tonight. But I will.”

“I know.”

She abandons the computer in favor of his lap, clearly in response to his dejected face. He wants answers, he can’t help it.

“We’ll figure it out,” she promises him, hands cupping his cheeks so she can direct his gaze to hers.

He nods — he believes her completely — and smiles against her lips as she kisses him softly. His hands slide up under the shirt she wears, taking in the feel of soft skin, and he pulls her body up against his, just to enjoy the feeling of her closeness.

 

—

 

Her voice reading _From the Heights of Macchu Picchu_ on a podcast was already one of the most moving things he’d ever heard, but her recitation as she slowly rides him is mindblowing.

The thin sheen of sweat covering her body makes her skin glow, and her hair curls around her shoulders as it dries — still slightly damp from a shower. His hands follow a ceaseless path over her body — palming her breasts, running down her stomach, curling around her thighs, cupping her ass — as he can’t decide where he most wants to touch her.

The poem is all about promising to be a voice for the voiceless, and it’s impossible not to worship her for the way that this principle has defined so much of her life. She has set herself to doing just that, he knows, to using her skills to give voice to those who need to stand up to corrupt governments, to corrupt business practices.

Partly, he thinks that Skye could read the telephone book and he would find it intensely erotic. But more specifically, it’s the sound of her voice on this kind of political poetry — the sound of her speaking her principles and morals — that does him in.

“And give me silence, give me water, hope.” She clenches down hard around him as she’s coming to the conclusion. “Give me the struggle, the iron, the volcanoes.” Her hips move faster even as she clenches down harder, and it leaves him gritting his teeth to hold back — just three more lines. “Let bodies cling like magnets to my body. Come quickly to my veins and to my mouth. Speak through my speech, and through my blood.”

As much as it pains him, he can’t even manage to wait for her, he just loses himself inside of her as she finishes the poem.

When he finally opens his eyes again, she’s sprawled across his chest, sweaty skin still stuck to his.

 

—

 

“I was fourteen. It was…”

 _A defining moment_ , Raina had called it.

Skye strokes his back and kisses the top of his head from where it’s pillowed just above her right breast.

“My mother and I had to move, and everything changed.” He has a flash of guilt — saying this to _he_ _r_ , telling her about his pain at losing a parental figure.

“Hey,” she kisses his head again. “Don’t do that. This isn’t a sob story competition.”

Coulson chuckles into her shoulder and then nuzzles his face against her as he settles.

“Before he died, I was a rule-breaker. And then after…”

 _A defining moment_.

“I guess I felt like I had to be the man of the house, like I had to act like a man. But I never did. I always felt like I was trying to prove to _someone_ that I was grown up.”

“What does that mean? To be grown up?”

He wishes he had asked himself that question at some point.

“I thought it was about doing what you were supposed to do.”

“According to whom?”

Another question he wishes he had asked himself.

“Someone who seemed like a father-figure, I guess.”

“You joined SHIELD just a few years later, right?”

“Yeah.”

 _A defining moment_.

He can feel her nod, and her hands trace soft circles across his back.

“How else did you know what you were supposed to do?”

“Books. Magazines. Watching the men around me,” he answers. “I learned food and wine. I learned scotch and cigars. I learned golf.”

Skye laughs, probably at the disdain in his voice on _golf_.

“You became someone different?”

“Someone not willing to challenge the status quo,” he admits.

“That doesn’t seem like you at all.”

“I’ve been different since I died. And you bring it out.”

He can feel her smile against the top of her head, feel the soft touch of her fingers on his skin.

“So maybe dying has made you more the person you used to be?”

“Hmm.” He likes the sound of that.

All this time, he's been struggling with the fact that he feels different, but maybe he feels different because he is  _more himself_ , not less. It makes him feel more in control, less worried about whatever has been done to him.

“Your psych evaluation calls your father's death ‘a defining moment,’” Skye tells him, and Coulson stiffens against her and pushes up. “What?”

“That’s what Raina called it.” He swallows and looks around the room. “That’s... _exactly_ what Raina called it.”

He sees the recognition dawn in her eyes, sees the moment where she follows him on this leap.

“You think Centipede has access to SHIELD intelligence?”

His heart seizes up at the idea, but it rings true. Skye leans over the side of the bed to dig out his folders, among them his psych evaluation. It’s not a document he’s spent any time with. There was no need, after all, since he knew what it said.

Together, they read over it.

 

—

 

“Are you sure?” Skye looks skeptical even though she’s the one that put together all of the pieces.

“Yes. You made quite the case.”

“I didn’t mean to make a case, I was just —”

“You were just following the data,” he tells her.

She looks sad and scoots up the bed to climb into his lap, to stroke his face and his arms and see that he’s okay. He turns his cheek into her palm, letting her gently support his head for a moment before turning twisting his neck enough to lay a kiss there.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

“Me, too. Turns out you were right to mistrust SHIELD.”

“I’m still not convinced it’s all of SHIELD that’s the problem.”

And this, this is the funniest part — Skye being more careful in her accusations of SHIELD than he is.

“I don’t believe it’s all of SHIELD,” he agrees. “There’s another organization working _within_ SHIELD, though. And all of SHIELD is suspect.” He runs his hand over his face.

“Your friends…”

“I don’t know,” he answers. “I don’t know if I can trust them.”

“You said your friend May was in contact with the Director, spying on you. Do you think…”

“I don’t know what I think,” he sighs.

“I think she’s probably one of the good guys, Phil. There wouldn’t be the need for this much secrecy if the Director was in on it, right?”

“Do you want to bet our lives on that? Because if we come out of hiding, if we contact someone and it’s the wrong person…”

Skye nods.

“I know.”

“I have to tell May,” he finally admits. Whatever May is, whether she's truly a friend or not, she isn't Centipede. I knows it in his gut.

“I can do that so they can’t tell where we are. Do you want that?”

“For starters,” he agrees.

It’s only been a week, he realizes, since he ran. He’s not sure how he feels about that.

 


End file.
